I applaud Blockstream and LN developers working independent of Blockstream like Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja who recognize that Bitcoin cannot scale to compete by simply kicking the can over and over and increasing the blocksize. It isn't an appeal to authority but simply a recognition of the facts and data that we would be much better off focusing on building multiple payment channels that resolve and support the bitcoin blockchain. It sets a dangerous precedence to not follow the evidence and best recommendations and instead be swept up with politics or fear that a fee market event will cause tremendous damage to Bitcoin's ecosystem in itself. No one has any solid evidence that this will occur instead of simply pushing some spam off chain.

Your explanations aren't a secret and I and many others are quite direct that bitcoin cannot possibly resolve all tx's on the chain and be efficient and scale. It has to become a settlement network to compete and serve at its intended purpose.

It would be good advice going forward if not only developers, but everyone was more involved in mining and we strive to incentivize a more diverse group of miners. It would also be wise if large mining pools contributed more to development so they have an influence in the direction of bitcoin and at minimum understand the process to a greater degree. More implementations that don't break consensus rules are also wise but encouraging a contentious hard fork with such a low threshold is akin to attacking the ecosystem.

P.S... I look forward to reading Bitcoin Classic's Scaling roadmap and am open to any evidence or proposals they suggest, but without a proposal even available to discuss Classic should not even be up for consideration until a plan is proposed and reviewed.